


hush baby

by MalcolmTucker



Series: Drabbles [5]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: AU, Gen, Sadstuck, Substance Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-04 15:33:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/395402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MalcolmTucker/pseuds/MalcolmTucker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You cry and cry, loud sobs, violent sobs, shaking sobs, but the pain just doesn’t go away. It wrenches at your head, and your throat, and your stomach, and you just can’t stop crying. Her thumb traces light circles around the back of your hand, but you don’t feel it, you can’t feel a thing but the pain. She pulls herself up onto your bed and tucks your head right under her chin, wrapping her arms around you. One tangles itself around your back and across your shoulders, and the other winds its way up into your hair. Her chest is wet with your tears, and you keep crying, all the while her mouth placed on top of your head, kissing it and mumbling, “Hush baby.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	hush baby

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheMostPsychotic (ymirjotunn)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ymirjotunn/gifts).



> helpfully posted by cool tech-savvy friend [themostpsychotic](http://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMostPsychotic/pseuds/TheMostPsychotic)
> 
> Thanks Lauren!!

It’s tantalising and almost in your grasp, the cabinet. 

It’s high above your five year old head, yes it is. But that’s what standing on the counter is for. The use of chairs is required to even get up on the counter, but soon enough, you’re up. You’ve gotta be on your very tippy toes, but you make it, you’re there. You feel like you’re on top of the world, new heights, new perspective; big dreams circle around your head, but you don’t lose sight of your initial goal. 

You turn around to face the grand prize, hands clasped tight around the knob that fits snugly in your palm. It’s like it was meant to be. Like it was made for your tiny grasp.

You yank on the knob to pull it open, nearly sending a bottle of white wine from the sixties tumbling to the ground, but you steady it, and steady yourself too. Peeking over your shoulder, left, right, left, right, once more, twice more, you make sure the coast is clear. And it is. 

It feels forbidden, being up on the counter. Looking into mommy’s special cabinet. But mama never strictly told you no. 

Peering over and around all the bottles and glasses, you spot a tiny one in the back. Another thing meant to be, you think. Tiny little hand weaving around fragile glasses, you manage to grip the neck of the bottle and pull it all the way out, but not without nearly dropping a few more things. You shut the cabinet soundly, and then sit down on the counter with your new toy. 

Perched between your crossed legs is a 1962 bottle of Domaine de la Romanee Conti la Tache, perfectly aged, ripe for the enjoyment of someone who isn’t five years old. Not that you would know. 

Hands grip the little cork, and with a struggle and some teeth involved, you manage to rip enough of it off that there is a small hole for you to drink from. You raise the bottle to your nose, and recoil, with a loud, “Bluh!” But the smell can’t stop you, nothing can stop you. 

You’re on the counter and you’re holding the forbidden fruit and you’re invincible, and nothing can stop you and so you stomach it up and take a drink. It tastes more awful than it smells and you immediately spit it out. It dribbles down your chin and spatters your white skirt with little red droplets and manages to make it onto the floor and counter. 

You think that it is probably the most appalling thing that you have ever had in your entire life, but you’re on the counter, and you’re still holding the forbidden fruit, and you’re invincible, and nothing can stop you, not even the terrible smell and even worse taste. 

And you stomach it up again and take another drink and this time you swallow and god it hurts to swallow. But then you take another sip and another and another and you can’t stop drinking and eventually the taste becomes soothing and so does the feeling in your belly. 

Your head does not really feel the same thing, but then again, your head can’t really feel anything at all. You’re dizzy, mind-bendingly dizzy, and numb heart-stoppingly numb, and there’s a warm fire in your belly and you can’t even think straight. 

You can’t even think at all. 

You can’t tell that the bottle has tipped over, the remnants spilling out across the counter and staining your light blond hair red. You can’t tell anything anymore, not that the bottle is rolling away from you, not that you’re unconscious, and you certainly can’t tell that mommy is holding you, carrying your fragile, wine stained body. 

She carries you up to your little pink room and places you in your little pink bed, changing you out of the soiled clothes and using a little wash cloth to clean your hair. 

You’ve got no idea that she tucks you into bed, singing, “ _hush baby,_ ” the whole time, and kissing your forehead and cheeks and hair as you fall to sleep. You don’t even remember waking up the next day. All you remember is being hunched over the toilet bowl, violently hurling your insides until they are no longer insides but instead outsides. 

And she is there next to you. 

“ _Hush baby,_ ” she says, and sits beside you there for hours until you fall asleep with your face perched on the side of the seat. 

And then you wake up the next day, brain alive with pain. At first you just sit still, sit still and let the tears run silently down your cheeks as the pain spreads around, but then you can’t take it anymore and you wail loudly, shaking with sobs. 

You can hear her light footsteps as she flies up the stairs, pushes the door open and rushes to your side. She kneels by your bedside, and holds one of your hands as you use the other to wipe away your tears and then clutch at your aching head. 

You cry and cry, loud sobs, violent sobs, shaking sobs, but the pain just doesn’t go away. It wrenches at your head, and your throat, and your stomach, and you just can’t stop crying. 

Her thumb traces light circles around the back of your hand, but you don’t feel it, you can’t feel a thing but the pain. She pulls herself up onto your bed and tucks your head right under chin, wrapping her arms around you. One tangles itself around your back and across your shoulders, and the other winds its way up into your hair. Her chest is wet with your tears, and you keep crying, all the while her mouth placed on top of your head, kissing it and mumbling, “ _Hush baby._ ” 

And the days go by since then, and the months go by since then, and the years go by since then, and then you’re suddenly eight years old. Yes, suddenly. It hits you real quickly and you’re grown so fast and your mama tells you all the time that you’ve become so old, so fast. And you can’t help but agree. You’re in the first grade and your teacher is as mean as can be and it makes you just a bit sadder, every day. 

By the time you’re in seventh grade, you’ve lost all your faith in the world and everything you can be. Everyone has. 

You sit alone at lunch and then go home and get drunk and fail all your classes at the exact same time. All your aspirations flushed down the toilet like the contents of your stomach after drinking a strong bottle. It’s like a reverse miracle, how you somehow manage to fuck up every aspect of your life simultaneously. You no longer wear white anymore; in fact, you’ve buried all the white clothes you owned out in the woods, along with all of the pictures of you as a little girl. It reminds you of the past. 

You hate the past. It cripples you, makes you sad, makes you remember that you could actually do things and dream things and be things. You hate the past because you had all the potential in the world, and most of all, you hate the past because you were so untainted. 

You were so innocent. 

And look at you now. Drunk every night, hung-over every morning, you’re anything but innocent. 

Tainted by the strong power of alcohol and a little bit of self loathing, you are no longer invested in life anymore. And you don’t think you ever will be. 

But ninth grade rolls in like a storm on the horizon of the sea, strong and powerful and crushing everything in its path. You feel worse by the day, your pain becoming the most significant part of your personality. And you don’t think it’ll ever get better. You rarely see your mom anymore, because school is hard and work is hard, and, “ _You’re a big girl, Ro, you can take care of yourself now._ ” 

But you can’t and you hate yourself for it and you can’t help but hate your mom too, because she isn’t there for you when you need it. 

She isn’t there when you need her. She isn’t there to stop you from ruining yourself and everything that you touch and turn into puddles of self-loathing and spilled alcohol. 

Sure, mom always told you not to drink, but she never _did_ anything about it. 

It’s not a mystery where the alcohol supply has gone when you are the only two who live there. And worse so, she restocks it, every time you take out a bottle, as if to try to provoke you. 

It’s like she wants you to die. 

But of course you know that’s only the alcohol talking within you, convincing you that your mom is a conniving, cold-hearted bitch who wants to torture you. 

The bottle rolls out of your hand and across the counter and onto the floor, shattering. You’re out cold on the counter before it hits the ground.

You wake up in the morning, bright and early; because you wouldn’t want to miss your first day of grade ten, now would you? You barely passed the grade last year, in fact, you’re surprised that you actually did pass. 

Mother comes home every few days or so, her new job taking its toll on the amount of time spent around the household. She’ll always come home late at night, when you’re too busy crying yourself to sleep to notice the sound of the front door clicking shut with a soft pop. You hear her light footsteps on the stairway as the steps creak beneath her. 

She lingers outside your doorway, her little reading light visible under the crack of your door as she waits until you’re asleep to set her book down on the hardwood floor and enter. 

Sometimes you’re still awake when she comes in and kisses the tops of your hair ever so gently; you’re just too out of tears to keep crying. Sometimes you’re dreaming but you feel her presence there and it calms the nightmares and scares away the demons that you’re too scared to face when awake. When you wake up in the morning, she’s already gone, but she always leaves behind a little golden note and a cup of coffee that is barely warm by the time you’ve risen. 

The notes are always different, and you’d never let her know, but you’ve kept every one, in chronological order. You look down at today’s. 

Dearest Ro,  
I apologise deeply for the lack of parental guidance I have granted you. I hope you know that I love you very much, and I will be home soon. Good luck at school this week, I hope to see you soon.  
Love,  
Mama

The lavender ink begins to smudge and the note is soiled and wet now so you set it back on the nightstand and collapse face first into the pillows with a strangled sob. You like pillows. They soak up your tears and your screams and sobs and they’re always there for you and they just take it. 

You wish your mother were a pillow, there to cradle your face while you just cried and screamed and writhed in pain. 

The days at school are difficult and progressively harder to live through, but as soon as the bell rings you run right home in the pouring rain and shrug off your coat and shoes by the front door and hole yourself up in your room. 

You don’t come out often, though when you do, it’s to pick out a bottle from the cabinet to bring up with you as dinner. Your supply runs out faster and unlike in your youth, you have to be somewhat sparing of your poisons since mother is only home every so often. 

You sit quietly in your bed with your laptop and spend your entire evening there, proceeding to do none of the homework you have been assigned. Instead, you wander the Internet, your labyrinth, your solace. 

You don’t think you could live without it and the cool people you’ve met there. You don’t really know them that well, since it’s only been about a month, but it still brightens your day a bit to talk to them. 

There’s the boy who talks like he belongs in the 1600s, the intellectually advanced cool kid, and your personal favourite, the happy-go-lucky gal. She is you. 

Well, everything you ever wanted to be. She is the child you aspired to be: full of light and life, imaginative and on top of the world, and most of all, happy. 

You wish so hard that you could be her, but when you bring the bottle to your lips and drink, you can’t even remember why.

The end of grade ten draws close, dangling dangerously within your grasp. You have done mind numbingly awful at school this year, but have somehow managed to pass, much to the surprise of everyone around you. It is a mystery no one understands. 

The bell rings and your stuff is already around your back, and you run as fast as you can out of the classroom and out of the school and down the road and back home. You unlock the door in a flurry and run upstairs, not even bothering to remove your shoes and coat anymore, though not missing the bottle you set out on the counter this morning. 

You’re in your room with the door shut in twelve minutes or less from the time the bell rings. The pesterchum logo appears on your shitty laptop as your computer boots up, and you get the butterflies like you do every day. 

The online symbol flashes for two of your three friends, and you smile before you realise that she isn’t on. She is probably still in school. Or on the bus. Or what if she’s at a club? Question upon question bombards you, and you can’t decide what to do, but a big blotch of orange text appears on your screen to snap you out of it.

TT: She will be home soon, don’t worry.

He comforts. You wonder how he does that mind reading shit and smile.

Summer vacation comes and you spend every second holed up in your room. You only leave to use the bathroom and to grab a bottle and occasionally bring things from the fridge up to your room. 

Rose is home less often now, but it’s not like you notice anyway. You lose track of the days and then the weeks and then the months and then before you know it, you’ve accidentally skipped the first week of school. 

You didn’t even notice.

School becomes a less frequent occurrence in your life. You go about once a week, making up illnesses each time, forging Doctor’s notes and Doctor’s names and Doctor’s offices. 

The teachers catch on, but they don’t do a thing. What teacher would want a kid who is too drunk to function in their class every day? 

You talk to Jake a lot, the most in fact, because he is always there. He says that he lives on an island, all by himself, and so he takes online classes. Plus, his time zone is different from yours, so he is always done with classes when you’re busy skipping them.

GT: How about you, Ro? How come you’re not in school?  
TG: im hamscholed  
TG: *homescholed

You don’t even attend classes once a week anymore. You haven’t actually attended in nearly a month and a half. 

Rumours around school say that you drank yourself to death, and you grin at just how believable that is. 

Might as well have. 

Your friends find out little by little about your drinking habit, but you don’t care, it’s not like it’s a secret anyway. 

Sometimes, you’re proud of how you can out-drink every adult you’ve ever met. 

Sometimes, it’s the fuel of the little fire made of self-loathing you hold high up in your heart. 

Your friends worry about you often, but you just tell them you’re fine. 

GG: Ro, are you sure you’re okay? I’ve got a kneeslapper, if you’re feeling a bit down!  
GG: Please don’t drink at all, either, it makes me quite a bit sad. :(  
TG: hahahaa its ok jaeny  
TG: *janey  
TG: im rly fine  
TG: like im acutally the most happy iev bean in a whale  
TG: and plus i havnet drank in a mounth  
TG: *lol fix evrything  
GG: Well, if you insist, Miss Ro!  
TG: i am insisting

You type and bring the bottle up to your lips at the same time.

Sometimes you drink so much that you don’t wake up for a day or two. The first time it happened, you worried when you woke up. Your friends worried about your disappearance too, but as it happened more often, your friends seemed to notice less.

None of them seem to actually know why you’re gone some nights, though Jane seems to think you’re just busy with school. Jane tells you that being swamped with work is a normal part of high school, and you type that you agree and put a lot of smilies and stuff after it. 

Sometimes you feel bad that you’ve been deceiving them for so long, but if they knew what you actually were, that being a permanently drunk high-school dropout, would they even want to be around you? 

Of course not, you think, how many friends do you have as proof of that? Exactly.

Rose comes home every now and then, but you’re too deep in a sleep most of the time to even notice. Along with the alcohol, you’ve started taking some of the sleep meds Rose has got hidden in the medicine cabinet of her bathroom. It knocks you right out into sleeps like comas. 

No dreams, no thoughts, no nothing, though you swear you can feel her presence and you swear you hear a faint, “ _Hush baby._ ” The second you wake up though, brain in a tumble equivalent to that of a five car pileup, your laptop is on and Pesterchum is open. 

You don’t even notice the note by your bedside.

Months go by and you don’t come out of your room. Rose doesn’t normally like intruding on your privacy, but this time, she is worried. 

You’ve had the door locked for ages, and there has been no sign of missing alcohol for nearly a month. She jostles the handle once. Still locked. 

She gives a little knock. No answer. 

She gives a panicked, three short knocks followed by a little yelp of your name. 

No answer. 

Rose calls your name again, but you don’t respond.

High school is busy and hard and none of the homework you are assigned gets done. The bell rings at school, signalling 3'o'clock, but what do you care? 

You're not even there.

It's 3'o'clock and it's raining real hard, just like how you like, but you can't feel it, you're too busy sleeping the pain away, dreaming the pain away. 

You're elsewhere, hardly even here, not that you haven't been gone since your first real drink. 

It's 3'o'clock and it's raining and you're alone in the graveyard. You visited there often when Rose was away. You checked every name in there methodically to make sure she hadn't wound up there without telling you. 

She never did.

It's 3'o'clock and it's raining and you're alone in the graveyard but you think someone is approaching and you swear you feel her presence while you sleep, and you swear you hear her say it. 

" _Hush, baby,_ " she says quietly as she places a golden note on the gravestone and cries.


End file.
